(no subject)

[vaginasandsuch]

and i'm thinking about graduation. i went and bought my cap and gown yesterday and i guess it's just one of those heavy symbolic gestures? because i can't stop thinking about how close the ceremony is now. i can't stop thinking about how everything is going to play out.

i can't stop silently freaking out about it.

because, and this should be apparent to you by now, berkeley is kind of my safe haven. it's no magical place and people are just as fucked up here as anywhere else, but it's mine. i came here and constituted myself as an independent (for certain values of the word of course), loving, living, breathing creature here. i have a certain relationship to my surroundings and a certain relationship to my wardrobe and a certain relationship to who i am and who i refuse to be while i'm here. i don't need to compromise on any important piece of myself here. i don't need to impress anyone, and i don't need to really deal with anyone's shit about who i am and how i conduct myself on a regular basis.

because in berkeley, i have surrounded myself with people who fucking love who and what i am. i travel in circles where people compliment my beard and my appearance. i travel in circles where people tell me i inspire them to be more themselves. and it's just a recycling of life, because i didn't get this way by myself. i was inspired by a bunch of other people to become what i am, and i am fucking honored that i could play a part in anyone becoming comfortable with whatever part of themselves (big or small) that they were not comfortable with before. i live and conduct myself in an environment where people encourage each other to be as fully themselves as they can.

i am not looking forward to having my family interrupt that.

i am not looking forward to the inevitable argument with them over whether i need to shave my legs/pits or get rid of my lil goatee or straighten my hair or wear deodorant or switch in some more subtle face jewelry for graduation. i already know that they will say "this is a special occasion! why can't you give us this once? why can't you compromise? you just don't care what anyone thinks, do you?"

and that my reasons will not be good enough for them, even as they are fucking heartbreakingly real and important to me. and they are:

1. it is MY graduation. MY special occasion, where I should get to present myself in whatever way I deem fit because
2. I worked hard and suffered through panic attacks and depression and anxiety and loneliness and feeling like a fucking failure for three and a half fucking years for this day and I should get to make MY OWN decisions about what this day should look like for ME because
3. this is MY graduation and I begged chloe to put Angela Davis at the top of the list of people we would ask to keynote, and Angela Davis is going to be keynote speaker and i'm not the only one who made this happen but I have so far been an active and enthusiastic part of the process of deciding what this day will be and I deserve to finish that out, at the very LEAST making my own hygiene choices for the day, because
4. that's how personal this is to me. it's my BODY that you're fucking with and maybe i am willing to make some concessions on your turf on your terms, but
5. this is not okay. this is not what i stand for and
6. you should be EMBARRASSED that you are so obsessed with whether there is hair on my chin/armpits/legs, that you can't get over your close-minded notions of whatever you think my gender presentation "should be" enough to LOOK AT ME as i am (who i am. what i am.) and see that i am a beautiful human being who was inspired by YOU to be so strong-willed and determined in the first fucking place. that you can't see me as anything more than selfish, when you are completely unable to even hear me out on this.
7. berkeley was the catalyst in me learning these things about myself, in my finding myself in this way, in my becoming what i am now. what kind of sense does it make that i should pretend to be something other than who and what i fucking am on my symbolic farewell to this institution that changed my life?
8. i'm presenting my fucking thesis on discourses on Black womyn and hair the day before graduation. i will NOT give my presentation with straightened hair, when my decision to go natural is the reason i took on the project in the first place. and who the fuck am i to give such a presentation and then give into pressures to conform on the day of MY graduation. it feels like a fucking negation of the work i've done here at cal, of the things i've learned, of the things i'm taking away from this experience and planning to teach my kids.
9. and i would feel fucking mortified because everyone (my friends, my professors, my other peers) would KNOW that that is not me. everyone should know by now that i think people should do what makes them feel best about themselves and their lives, so long as they're not harming anyone. everyone knows that THIS (hairy, pierced, natural person who smells like a person) is how i feel best about me and my life and the fucking world, okay? everyone would know that that hairless flower-smelling, straight-haired person is not ME and it's not fair that you're trying to humiliate me on MY day.

and it's not like i'm not willing to make little compromises. i was already planning to paint my nails and wear my sexy purple heels and my pinstriped "sexy secretary" outfit. i will probably wear some kind of fragrance, some eyeliner. perhaps i will even wear studs in my mouth instead of rings. those are things that are fine with me, because they are things that i can put on and take off.

it's not like i don't understand that i could not have done this without them. it's not that i'm not grateful for all of their contributions, or that i'm not excited that they will finally be around to support me in something that matters to me ((not still bitter about the vagina monologues at all~~)). i'm just not okay with having to change parts of me that i see as integral to who and what i am. i'm not okay with making concessions that feel too much like a devaluation of my favorite personal state.

it's 7:23am and i still have more to say, about the queer people of color talk today, and about leftover angst of not being ___(fill in the blank)___ enough, and about standing up for what i believe. but i don't think i'll ever run out of things to say. there isn't an end to this entry. there probably isn't even a coherent thread linking this shit together. i don't know.